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I am a strong believer in the value of social networking as a relationship, branding and long term investment in building friends. Of course, doing business with friends is critical since your enemies and strangers are less likely to call you and - after all, what are friends for!
Unfortunately, some of my dealer/vendor clients and affiliated automotive advertising agencies are not long term thinkers. They often challenge my assertion that the R.O.I. from social networking is a given based on my own experience over a very lucrative 35 plus year career in the auto industry doing business with/for my friends.
As a result I have focused on new ways to "monetize" social networking on a more direct and immediate basis. I am proud to say that I have succeeded on many levels through the use of new techologies, processes and platformed applications on the WWW - which I will be discussing at the 7th Digital Dealer Conference in my session regarding new ways to monetize social networking - but that doesn't dismiss the long term R.O.I. that I submitt has more value than any short term solutions.
I am writing this post in the hope that some of my DrivingSales.Com friends will confirm my assertion by replying with some shared success stories that matured as a direct result of thier participation in DrivingSales.Com or other sites like ADM, DealerRefresh.Com, AdAgencyOnline.Net or the new "network of networkers" - AutoIndustryInsights.Com.
If you agree that social networking works without having to "prove it" on a per vehicle basis then help me - help you - help our fellow social networkers share in our success. After all, what are friends for!

I wanted to offer a few postive remarks about my experience in handling a problem with the Client Service Advisor for Dealerrater.com, when I finished typing in my remarks and clicked "submit", a page immediately appeared that said "you must offer something in the'cons' protion or box" to submit - but yet there was no back button, or "click here to return" button, or any other direction for me. So I was left to believe all the time I spent ffirst finding this site, then typing in my posisitve remarks have been wasted because at this point I dont have the time to go back and re-log in this site and go through process, which was cumbersome, slow and tedious, and do it all over again. wITH NO OTHER OPTION OFFERED, I THEN WENT TO THE UPPER LEFT CORNER OF MY SCREEN AND TRIED TO BACK PAGE, ONLY TO BE THROWN OUT - AND BACK TO THE SITES HOME PAGE. At this point my frustration is rising and my time has run out. So I lose, and the helpful person at Dealerrater loses, and the customer who I could have been helping otherwise loses, my boss and my company loses because now my productivity ratio is now in the toilet.
I found it interesting that you have to spend 5 to 10 minutes maneurvering around this slow and cumbersome site to give "THIS" Site a rating - this is the only outlet I found. It appears that this site, who's primary servce is giving one the opportunity to rate a company, doesnt provide a clear opportunity or mechanisim for folks to Rate "IT". Sad. It's obvious they dont want hear how they might improve - and again, I have just wasted even more of my time.

Hi Stan -
Thanks for the feedback you experienced while adding your feedback. Yes - simple items like that should be included, we're on it!
The positive feedback that you originally intended to leave for DealerRater.com is extremely valuable to them and the DS community as well, I hope you can find the time to come back and add your comments. http://www.drivingsales.com/ratings/products/certified-dealer-program
We're actually hard at work revamping nearly every inch of the site with regards to design, functionality & usability - to help eliminate these types of situations and make everyone's visit efficient and helpful.
We want DrivingSales to remain the best place for Dealers to go for anything they need. As a former dealership employee myself, DS helped me for years with all of the concepts, ideas & strategies shared here - in fact, I loved that concept so much that I had to come work for DrivingSales.
Thanks again Stan, I look forward to hearing more from you. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you ever need anything.
Eric Miltsch
Director of Product Strategy
eric@drivingSales.com